


with soft spoken hope, the hero says

by Nellsie



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, INCREDIBLY self indulgent and you know what? valid., Non-Explicit Sex, Romantic Fluff, listen man they FUCK in that scene and its the whole ass outdoors. cassandra? wild. i love her.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-15 09:27:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16060247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nellsie/pseuds/Nellsie
Summary: Mahanon and Thedas, but mostly Mahanon and Cassandra.





	with soft spoken hope, the hero says

**Author's Note:**

> notes about my mahanon lavellan: hes fuckin cute and in love with cassandra and thats ALL you need to know. its 9:15pm and it feels like 1am. god.
> 
> if you wanna hear about my dragon age ocs or just see some dragon age memes every two years, follow my sideblog: electriciandragon.tumblr.com

Mahanon is not a hero, he says; nor is he a chosen one. He isn’t a herald of anything, let alone Andraste, a woman he knows nothing about and has no capacity to worship. He is simply a young man with pointed ears and a mark on his hand—the providence of chance. His fate lacks divine intervention of any kind, and he is led by a simple vision of how it _should_ be. He is guided by his own sense of righteousness, separate from his faith.

(Though if you ask him in private, when he is feeling particularly open, he might say that Mythal—mother of the world in Dalish faith—is watching over him. He wears the mark of Dirthamen on his face, and he walks on a path shaped by Falon’Din, and so it is only natural that he is watched by the eyes of elven gods.

Even so, the fervor of the populace is more than enough to make up for Mahanon’s own beliefs. Inquisition recruits think of him as a hero, and when they ask for him to succeed they make those pleas to _their_ gods. Mahanon’s faith, Dalish or not, is made irrelevant by even the suggestion of his heraldry.)

“We’ll do what is _right,”_ he says, holding a sword nearly the same size as himself, “the Inquisition will stand for all of us.”

And suddenly everyone is united even when no one is. For a moment, everyone cares for the greater good, and all stand before the Inquisitor listen. The Inquisition is stolid and steadfast in its wish for righteousness, and for the first time it seems absolutely clear in its purpose.

Mahanon smiles on the rallied crowd, and everything seems certain in him. He is not confused. He is not wavering. He is going to do what is _right._

* * *

He is thin and freckled, with a gap between his front teeth and light hair that becomes even lighter in the sun. His cheekbones are not so prominent, but they are accentuated by the details of his vallaslin; the markings are a dark green, carefully detailed on his skin.

He lights up when he smiles, which is often. There is the obvious—the laughing and the joking and the deflecting; and then there is the subtle—a gentleness in him which rears its head when he can make the heaviness of the world feel just a bit lighter for someone else.

He is completely transparent. He is ridiculous and oblivious and completely absurd and his lover falls for that. She falls for everything about him.

He flirts with her at every opportunity. He comments on her talents and her achievements and her strength. He gets this look in the eyes whenever she’s on his mind.

“Cassandra,” he says, watching as she pushes her blade through the core of a training dummy, “Watching you is the best part of my day.”

She snorts and looks over to him with a (not quite) bemused expression. He is leaning on his staff, and the expression is his face is positively infatuated—because that _is_ what this is. Infatuation. Something he will move past in time, because he is much too… _much,_ for her.

 _Much,_ being the Inquisitor. He has too much to focus on, and he cannot focus on her when the whole of Thedas rests on his scrawny shoulders. When he will be spoken of in stories well beyond his passing, and he should have someone sweeter, softer around the edges, than she. Someone like Josephine—or perhaps that spirit he is always in the company of, if he is capable of reflecting romance in any capacity—would be better suited for Mahanon.

Still, he is... cute, and his flirting, which is silly and unnecessary and going _nowhere,_ has its own sort of charm. There is no harm in indulging it, if only for a little while, before inevitably putting it to an end.

(And Cassandra knows she must put it to an end when she is disappointed at the thought.)

When she explains this to him—that for all his besotted actions and dreamy inflections, they are still not going to be in a romantic relationship, because he is the Inquisitor and he cannot divert to Cassandra what she would want from love—she initially tries to lie. Tries to say, _no,_ courting isn’t what she wants, but Cassandra is a terrible liar and they are called Seekers of _Truth_ for a reason, she supposes.

So she says, “I take it back, I do want those things. I want a man who sweeps me off my feet, who gives me flowers and reads me poetry by the candlelight. I want the ideal,” because she has read books and seen plays and all of those things bring out this hunger in her. A hunger for gentler things.

She continues, “You are the Inquisitor and the Herald of Andraste,” and there’s another thing that wouldn’t work between them—she thinks of him as the _Herald of Andraste,_ and he thinks of himself as anything but. “You cannot be that man.”

“But I can do all of those things,” he says, his brown eyes glittering with self-confidence. “I can be _romantic!”_ incredulous, like Cassandra is naive to have doubted his proclivity for romance.

And she doesn’t doubt it—no, Mahanon is as sappy and romantic as any man can be—but she knows that it simply wouldn’t work between them.

(He is a mage, she is a Seeker of Truth. He believes in Dalish gods, and she is a devout Andrastian. He is training to be a _Mortalitasi,_ and she has always been repulsed by the dark fascinations of Nevarrans who do the same. He is foolish, but so kind, and she is set in her own ways, stubborn.

She reminds herself of all of those things, because they are too different. It would surely brew a disaster, were they to be together—and they would never be together.)

“I can be that man, Cassandra,” and the way he says her name, with his smile and captivated voice, it almost makes her reconsider all of their incompatibilities. Almost.

He leaves her with a promise of courtship, and she returns to his training with a sense of exasperation. There is something to be said for his persistence, she thinks.

(The thought of him is persistent when it shouldn’t be. When she is training and when she is reading and when she is doing nothing at all, Mahanon is always lingering in the back of her mind. It must be an empty promise, she thinks, because if it were real—

Mahanon does not make empty promises, but this should be an exception, because Cassandra is most certainly going to reject him.)

But the time comes, and he takes her to a candlelit space outside of Skyhold, and he recites poetry that she is certain he memorized, because she is certain he is illiterate. He is quite a performer, though, and he puts his all into this poem that he absolutely did not read—which makes Cassandra wonder who _did_ read it to him. Maker, she hopes it wasn’t Varric.

She does take the book from him, and she reads a few lines of her own. Very innocent, Chantry disapproved metaphors for love and sexuality and etcetera. Mahanon stumbles over his words and his face flushes and he looks truly enamored, and Cassandra's better judgement does fly away from her at that moment.

He is surprised, at first, when she kisses him. His eyes flutter open and closed, and he takes a moment to lean into her, but there is something endearing about the way he puts his all into the kiss after his initial reaction.

And, of course, they proceed to have sex in the woods, underneath the blanket of stars above them. It’s lovely, it could be a scene straight out of a novel.

(One that Cassandra would surely read. A Seeker and an elven mage—what an unlikely pair, and what a story to be told.)

She tells him of her past lovers—of which there is only one; one who came to a tragic fate, at that—and fleetingly, she wonders what his past lovers must have been like. It is a brief thought, however, and she must return to it at a more opportune time. She instead assures him that, no matter the circumstance, she won’t let Corypheus win.

She expects a lighthearted comment in return, something that will be accompanied by his characteristic smile and honest laughter, but instead he looks back at her in awe.

He says, “I love you,” with the sincerity of a man who is in far too deep. He quickly comes to an awareness of the situation, “And I—I didn’t plan on saying that, not that it isn’t true, but I figure it might be too early for it and—well—uhm,” he tries, “Can I try again?”

Cassandra nods, and there is the slightest hint of a smile on her face.

Mahanon takes a deep breath, and closes his eyes, and he opens his mouth again, and, “I love you,” he says, “Okay, try number three—”

She laughs, then, and it’s nice. “Tonight, I believe you,” she says, and she kisses him again. There is a beat of silence before she adds, "Whether or not it is your fondness of elfroot talking, we stand yet to see."

He is in hysterics at that, and when he manages to catch his breath he says, "I love you," for the third time.

**Author's Note:**

> "or that spirit he is always in the company of," is because i have aus where mahanon and cole are Romantical. scandelous i know. "fondness for elfroot" is weed. he smokes fantasy weed.
> 
> ORIGINALLY i wasn't going to post this until i actually knew what i wanted to do with it. i was going to just rehash cassandra's entire romance but didn't feel like it. i thought that /maybe/ i'd write about mahanon's relationships with his companions in general, but describing someone's intimate friendship with cole is weirdly out of place next to a section about how they fuck their girlfriend in the woods, ya know?
> 
> so anyway, heres this uncooked dish of a fic. the secret ingredient is love (and my ability to write syrupy shit for decades.)


End file.
